Dean Henderson, who has written several books, including Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families and Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics and Terror Network, made the remarks on Thursday during a telephone interview with Press TV, commenting on US officials’ repeated threats of sanctions against Russia and Washington’s military buildup in the Baltic region to intimidate Moscow.

“Well, again it’s the case where the mainstream media serve as the mouthpiece for the establishment, for the bankers … According to them, it’s all about the Russians and how the Russians are trying to protect their Black Sea fleet, which is in Crimea — which they have every right to do; they got a 150 years old lease, and they’ve been there forever –, and people in that region do speak Russian,” he said.

“But what they (the media) should be talking about is the people who took over Ukraine, basically in a putsch, basically marched President Viktor Yanukovych out of the country under the threat of death at gunpoint. They are basically a bunch of thugs who are being sponsored by the oligarchy that’s been in Ukraine and working with the international bankers for their whole lives,” Henderson added.

He stated that Yulia Tymoshenko, who was briefly the prime minister of Ukraine, had co-led the Orange Revolution, and “the 2005 Forbes magazine named her the third most powerful woman in the world. She worked with [former US] Vice President Dick Cheney… She is basically a billionaire.”

“When she was thrown out of power, the people in Ukraine woke up and realized that the Orange Revolution was phony. And she is a natural gas executive; some people say that she owns over a quarter of the country’s natural gas resources. She was thrown out. She was convicted of embezzlement of state funds. She was given seven years prison sentence,” Henderson said.

“A day after she was released from prison in a good faith gesture by Viktor Yanukovych, the snipers opened fire from the rooftops on the Maidan in Kiev. And the media reported that these were snipers from Viktor Yanukovych’s government, but in fact … these people were from the far-right fascist organizations known as the Ukrainian National Assembly and the Ukrainian People's Self-Defense. These people are tied with Tymoshenko, and tied with the oligarchs. They worked with the United States, the EU, and NATO in Georgia to destabilize Georgia, in South Ossetia,” he noted.

Political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November 2013 after the country’s ousted president, Yanukovych, refrained from signing the Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.

On February 23, the Ukrainian parliament ousted Yanukovych and named anti-Kremlin Oleksandr Turchynov, the legislature’s newly-elected speaker, as interim president.

On March 6, the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea voted to split from Ukraine and become part of Russia, calling a referendum in 10 days to validate its decision.

In response, Obama said that the referendum “would violate the Ukrainian Constitution and violate international law,” and ordered sanctions on individuals he said were involved in Russia’s military build-up in Ukraine, including travel bans and freezing of their US assets.

Washington has also sent US fighter jets to allied countries located near Ukraine. Meanwhile, a US Navy guided-missile destroyer has started joint training drills with Romanian and Bulgarian naval forces in the Black Sea, across the water from Crimea.

Press TV